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What is your deductible and max out of pocket? If you hit or are close, you wont have many more healthcare related expenses for the rest of the year and while the 1st couple bills may seem bad, the rest wont.
My wife had pretty intense emergency surgery a few years back. We had a high deductible plan at the time ($0 premiums through her employer - a hospital), and end up paying ~6k out of pocket for it. The overall bill for the surgery + week in hospital was ~$115k. However, there was a cash option for ~10-15% of that, or a payment plant for about a quarter of it, for if we didnt have insurance. However, when she had to have a follow up surgery later, we paid a massive $0 bill since wed already hit our out of pocket max.
The following year, same deal. Another follow up surgery that we hit our max out of pocket ($3k since we figured shed need another surgery and went with a lower deductible/out of pocket max plan - $100/month premiums through her employe) and then she had another surgery and i had a surgery for just small copays (< $200 total tops).
Yes, healthcare costs are high, but a lot of that has to do with how litigious we are in America. Over half of physicians will get sued once in their career and someone has to pay for that. And in America, we dont have caps on damages. For example, Canada has a 350k cap and UK has a 400k cap. Lawsuits in America routinely surpass 1mill. You also have the added costs of the uninsured and underinsured that someone has to foot the bill for. In our case, its the facilities and the insurance companies, which in turn goes to those who actual pay (us). In other countries, its the government, which in turn is those who pay taxes (again us).
To add, i would gladly pay what i do to have access to DRs and procedures when i want/need. My parents recently sold their business in the healthcare industry, and decided to try out medicare. After my Dad getting his knee surgeries denied because they were not "necessary" and not life threatening, they went back to private insurance and he had both covered by insurance.
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